


Elegy

by lizthefangirl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellamy PoV, Bellarke, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Josephine Lightbourne Possessing Clarke Griffin, Post-Josephine Lightbourne Possessing Clarke Griffin, Spec, Speculation, The 100 (TV) Season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 02:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19219702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizthefangirl/pseuds/lizthefangirl
Summary: During/after 6.06. Bellamy mourns.





	Elegy

_Clarke's dead._

He was sat at the edge of the pond he'd very nearly drowned one of his more unfavorable friends in. He was pretty sure he was dying, too.

He had almost laughed in his chains earlier, as he felt the poignant familiarity of the statement, long before he'd said it to Madi or the others.

Apparently, it wasn't enough to lose her once—fully, mortally lose her. Because she'd been quite dead before, as far as he knew. His reaction had been that of truest mourning after Praimfaya. There hadn't been hope in those six years of some miraculous recovery; it was a horrible fact, especially knowing how faithfully she'd awaited his return. But for her, there'd at least been the potential of him being alive.

She'd been burned to death by radiation so that they might have a chance to live. Wiped out, just like the rest of Earth, and scattered to the cosmos. This had become absolute, like saying Earth's sky was blue. Like saying his own name.

Their lives were always rather perilous, even before. That was the nature of survival. He knew, therefore, that he could technically lose her at any moment—could lose any of them to anything, especially on Sanctum. He  _knew_ that, and yet—

Stupid. Blindly confident. Ignorant. Oblivious. 

 _Don't be ridiculous,_ she would have said to him, lips pursing.  _We were all just. . . existing. That's hardly a criminal offense, Bellamy._

Again, he almost smiled—not in any semblance of happiness. Dark amusement, more like. She'd spoken to him on the Ark, too. Not just on the radio, but like this, in his head. The difference was that in time, she became a phantom. A memory. 

Now, she would walk through those doors, without a damned scratch on her. Solid, real—alive and utterly not alive. 

The need for revenge had not simmered out. But it was true what he said, that she would have been disgusted by the idea of slaughtering these people in wrath, not to mention that it would be gross disrespect to do so in her name (though maybe taking out Murphy was an exemption; or at the very least, beating the snot out of him again).

He thought about Madi, how he'd been adamant that it had needed to be him. _Had_ to be him that told her. It wasn't unlike what he'd felt for Octavia growing up, though maybe even more. . . paternal. Yeah, that was the word for it, even though it drove the breath from his lungs. It'd been a bit like losing her a third time when that child grabbed onto him for dear life—unable to shed tears, just gasping quickly in his ear. Maybe the only other person alive besides Abby whose love for her could even begin to compare to his own. 

That was another point that left him breathless; he quickly shuffled about relentless thoughts, that he might not linger on it just yet.

Russell had told him point blank that there was no getting her back, and he read the bastard's earnesty. Just as he could've maybe— _maybe_ —felt some degree of sympathy for the man, for doing what he had to for his daughter to live. 

Here, he coolly corrected himself: His daughter wasn't dead. She was lounging in a little bit of plastic and metal, likely throwing a tantrum. What he had done was steal her a voice and a body—as if she hadn't had enough of those before. As if a single body wasn't enough.

One thing was for certain: Any compliance with the Primes on his part was temporary. It was buying time. He wasn't keen on immortality, didn't so much as bat an eye at the concept, unlike Murphy. Because it was unnatural. Because the cost was simply too great, and always would be. Hell, they'd already technically outlived their allotted time, being frozen and stored away. Murphy would argue that wasn't  _living,_ and Bellamy would throw him into the pond. 

His betrayal did sting, however unsurprised he claimed to be—there had been hope there, real hope, that he'd outgrown his former selfishness. But this was the same, even if he was under the impression that he was actually _giving_ something to them, to Emori. 

Best not to linger on Murphy, either. 

Echo had behaved. . . precisely as he'd figured she would. Almost quaking in preparation for an attack, already bent on terminating every last person involved in this. Part of him might be slightly warmed by this, the part that yearned for she and Clarke to be on even ground; yet he was aware that even if she had developed a sense of respect for his dearest friend, her reaction had far more to do with his anguish than her murder. Echo was strange in the whole  _head and heart_ spectrum that he so often pondered. For her, the practical solution was often a violent one, fueled by violent emotion—that just so happened to be carried out in such a resolute manner that one would think her ethically indifferent. She wasn't, of course. Emotion and action merely existed in such close range for her, plus she'd been trained to repress further reflection for good measure.

He'd had a nightmare on Earth, after he'd poisoned Octavia. One of many subconscious repercussions of the whole 'who you love' thing. He had been sitting with her in a dark concrete room—a cell. The crumbs of the algae-laced bar dappled her chin.

 _You know_ , she'd mused slowly, leaning her head against a wall,  _Echo was almost shot for fleeing. Pretty sure I threatened her life another time, too. You didn't exactly lose it then, did you?_

He hadn't responded. Just gritted his teeth.

A flippant shrug.  _Look at you. Look at what you've done for Clarke Griffin. You just put your own sister into a coma to save her life._

_Blodreina, you mean._

She'd cut a grin.  _You still have a fool's hope for me, big brother. Don't lie._

_What the hell is your point?_

_Was that not obvious?_ Octavia snorted, shaking her head.  _I wonder which one a stranger might think you more committed to, based on appearance alone. I wonder if they'd see you next to your supposed_ partner _and believe she's anything less than a lackey if Clarke was in the same room._

He'd been ready to cross the floor and start sparring, but she'd dryly raised her hands.

_All I'm saying is, maybe it's best not to live with your heart divided. Forget about yourself—what happens to them, when you have to choose once and for all?_

He'd woken up startled, mere hours from the carnage of the pit, and was violently sick in the corner of his holding cell. Even if Clarke would've hated him when he died, if she'd never spoken to him again if he lived— _she_ would have been alive. Maybe happy, someday. That was enough by him.

Or so he'd thought, until he'd had to face something of a twisted joke during the actual fight: That he wasn't just fighting to get back to the others, to his "family," as he'd so brutally proclaimed to her. In the most harrowing moments, when steel kissed flesh and his muscles were wrapped in flame, he was fighting to get back to Clarke. Senselessly, but determinedly. 

Sickness roiled now, however millions of miles away from that room, that day. He'd already emptied his stomach in the palace, moments after he'd regained use of his body. Onto a canvas bearing Josephine's face, apparently. Then he'd screamed himself hoarse. Wished to be unconscious, at one point—even gauging if his skull might connect with a pillar, only to discover his tether was too short. It was simply too much to bear while awake.

He now understood that his grief on the Ark had been a shadow. Quite unbearable, but still—there had been  _distance_. Insurmountable physical distance that subtly softened the full wages of loss. 

Her death, her actual death, was in highest contrast. Her murder had been within a mile radius, if that. He had probably been in conversation with Echo; he had convinced himself he was happy for Clarke's one night stand after a couple of relatively strong drinks, and that had been that. He had gone to sleep and she had woken up someone else.

It wrung him out, body and soul. His eyes were terribly raw, hot tears flaring as another choked sob rattled out of him. 

Was this their story's end, then? After everything? It was twisted in a way he only likened to a long-forgotten Greek myth, some newly discovered one. Surely they'd have spun something truly gut-wrenching, if they'd been able to comprehend this scenario. 

There was a word for it. For all of it. It explained so much, fathomed the very depths of him with painfully acute detail.

It was a word for them, and it was lined with razors every time it rose in his mind, his throat. In one version of the universe, muddled and impossible, a euphoric word. A curse in this one. It was supposed to belong to himself and another. It did. But it wasn't theirs to begin with, and perhaps hadn't been for some time.

Because oh God, did he love her.

He loved her for years and then an idle century—and woke up still loving her. Woke up to her face and wept as he stood over a new world, holding her to him. And realized they were the only two awake from a dead Earth. The only two. That he couldn't have imagined another at his side in that moment, or imagined anything quite as beautiful as the brilliant light lining her long-dormant face, casting her eyes clear, radiant blue.

She was his family. She'd been so very right about that. Then, as he'd embraced her, the words had caught at him like brambles. Because of what they should have meant, and what his heart insisted instead. That it ran deeper, always deeper for them, that family was not where they stopped. . .

So he cried for love. For bitter shame limning him, a silent disease. For regret of words true and unspoken, however blasphemous the consequences would have been. 

He told himself in that moment, alone with the water and the great ringed planet above and below, that if the stars granted them one more minute, he would use it on that word. He would tell her. He'd damn it all. Because it was the period of every sentence in his brain and she couldn't even hear it. Sometimes bellowed, sometimes whispered:

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

**Author's Note:**

> So. How about Bob and Eliza, huh?
> 
> Still reeling from those jokers, I tell you what. But I'm thriving to be honest, because it looks like we're getting a pretty darn good Blarke storyline at the same time. It's suspicious, really. Anyway, I loved that they showed Bellamy in full-on mourning mode. I think the implications of that will be interesting. Needed to take it a little further though.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think! Long live Blarke... and Beliza? Again, what universe is this? Where am I?
> 
> (p.s. lowkey losing it because "elegy" sounds like "eligius" uwu, i'm really a Scholar huh)


End file.
